Odd story in WaPo — strong lede at odds with substance within:

Taliban establishes elaborate shadow government in Afghanistan – washingtonpost.com

U.S. military officials say that dislodging the Taliban’s shadow government and establishing the authority of the Karzai administration over the next 18 months will be critical to the success of President Obama’s surge strategy. But the task has been complicated by the fact that in many areas, Afghans have decided they prefer the severe but decisive authority of the Taliban to the corruption and inefficiency of Karzai’s appointees.

Sounds bad, right?  But, then it continues to say,

Shadow government officials collect taxes, forcing farmers at gunpoint
to turn over 10 percent of their crops, according to accounts of
officials and residents. Taliban district chiefs conscript young men
into the radical Islamist movement’s army of insurgents, threatening
death for those unwilling to serve. And the Taliban’s judges issue
rulings marked by a ruthless efficiency: With no jails in which to hold
prisoners, execution by hanging or automatic rifle is the swiftly
delivered punishment for convicted murderers and rapists, or for anyone
found guilty of working with the government.

This makes it seem as if Taliban power is essentially ruling by force.

I really don’t know the answer here.  If the Taliban is mostly influential by virtue of coercion, then a population-security approach is likely to bear fruit.  If, on the other hand, the key element is anti-corruption and decisiveness, then our efforts are doomed to failure as resources are sucked into a black hole of ineffective governance.

The problem, from my perspective, is that almost everyone writing on Afghanistan begins by assuming one of the two stories and then charges pell-mell into policy recommendation.  The challenge is that the Taliban — and other insurgent groups — are dynamic and adaptive.  They will alter their strategy to counter ours, which is precisely why I argue that our tendency to abstract out the enemy in 3-24 is so dangerous.